Naked Mom

Modeling yourself after someone else will never work. I wanted to write this book to hopefully inspire women to share their experiences, to learn and live and laugh together. Motherhood is a community, and we should all reap its collective wisdom and joy. But at the same time, I hope you'll find your private dancer deep within, and let her guide you through the music that is yours alone. I hope that sharing my own missteps and triumphs will help you realize your own possibilities and discover potential you didn't know you had, or put aside long ago. The truth is, I've achieved more as a mother than I've ever done in my life.

This book won't tell you how to live your life, but I'll show you what really goes on behind the scenes in mine, and how I manage—on good days—to make it work.

Perfection isn't an ideal, it's an illusion. I just don't see life as an escalator, where ten easy steps will land you a perfect body, or perfect marriage, or perfect career. And this whole concept of defining success as the ability to balance everything? Makes sense if you're a circus seal, but not if you're a woman. Repeat after me: There is No. Such. Thing. As. Balance. I'm always asked in interviews how I balance everything going on in my life. The short answer is: I don't! If I strived for balance, I'd be disappointed every day. As a young mom, I was constantly chasing that goal, and when it (of course) eluded me, I would end up feeling inadequate. Clearly, I just wasn't doing "it" right, as if "it" could even be defined, much less contained and controlled. A decade of motherhood and too many missteps and mistakes to count have since given me the wisdom to let go of the stupid balance myth once and for all. Life serves up enough stress without lining up for second helpings.
That's why I couldn't fathom writing your typical handbook for modern moms. We're more complicated than that. It'll suck the soul right out of you if you buy into the popular how-to propaganda that portrays life as some giant jigsaw puzzle that you can solve if you're just clever enough or patient enough to fit together all the precut pieces. What I envision is more of a mosaic, forever shifting and changing design, color, and mood. You can take the same tiny stones and create a placid lake or turbulent sea. Once you start sorting those countless little fragments, a pattern will emerge. You have to take that much on faith, then let skill and imagination fill in the rest of the masterpiece.

Naked Mom

Our lives are continually rearranged and take new shape. My own life is radically different today from what it was a year ago, when I sat in my office with a legal pad and a latte and first began thinking about what I wanted to tell you. My career is in a different place, my relationship has dipped and soared, and my four kids keep growing and learning and constantly changing. They educate and reeducate me every single day, and just when I think I've got them figured out, they change on me again! This whole process of soul searching has given me a chance to discover new things about myself, and to learn so much about myself as a woman, a mother, a lover. Having to examine my life and my choices under my own microscope was sometimes scary, but also exhilarating. I came to realize that what I wanted all along wasn't really balance after all.